The Influence of Literary Processes from Different Countries on Chinese Fiction Writing

Chinese Literature for Children Nellvena Duncan Eutsler (bio) Chinese Popular Literature and the Child, by Dorothea Haywood Scott. Chicago: American Library Association, 1980. Dorothea Haywood Scott in her Chinese Popular Literature and the Child provides a valuable service for the Westerner recently attracted to Chinese literature. The book provides an articulate overview of Chinese literature, with background material for those who wish to explore further the long traditions of literature for children. Chinese popular literature had its beginnings between 1765 and 1123 B.C. and is thus the longest unbroken literary tradition in the world, with a wider audience than any other. Chinese literature reflects the historical changes within its culture: a diversity of minority peoples and their various dialects, invasion from without and turmoil from within, and everchanging political philosophies. Through various media the literature has been preserved from ancient times, and Scott recognizes their literary process as a "story of change within continuity." Scott considers Chinese children's literature in the light of the Chinese system of education. She points out that Chinese thought and pedagogy reflect the influence of sages such as Confucius, Mencius, the Buddhist monks, and the Taoists. She notes the impact caused by differences between scholarly classical writing and colloquial language. The Chinese, who have long been aware of the difficulties posed by these differences, have initiated recent language reforms that have revolutionized the style of Chinese writing; their literature now reaches a much wider audience. Their entire educational process had for centuries inhibited learning by its stylistic and classical requirements. At last the words of Feng Meng-lung, the late Ming Dynasty author and scholar quoted by Scott, have been heeded: "In this world literary minds are few but rustic ears are many." [End Page 183] In order to appreciate and understand Chinese children's literature, we must understand the traditions which shaped China's attitudes toward their children. Not until early in the twentieth century did China recognize the special needs of her children, although Chinese children had access to printed stories centuries before the English or American child had access to a book. Oral traditions have been as influential for Chinese children as for children from other cultures. By 960 A.D. the storytellers had become a highly professional body of public entertainers. Their prompt books served as the basis for later novels. Although, as Scott points out, there are no traditional collections of Chinese myths and legends, myths are found imbedded in the whole body of early Chinese literature. Chinese classics provide central sources in the Orient as do the Old Testament, Perrault, Grimm, and others in the Western world. As in the tradition of Western children's literature, Chinese children had their primers (the Thousand Character Classic and the Three Character Classic) and their early picture books (the Fifteenth Century Illustrated Chinese Primer, the earliest known extant copy of which is dated 1436). They had these books long before western civilization had Babes Booke in manuscript form (1430), or Caxton's Aesop's Fables (1484), or a hornbook (1540), or Orbis Pictus (1658). Scott does not discuss the omission of fables, but she explains that older literary collections contain few stories about animals. This evidence seems odd, since animals play an important role in Chinese myths. In her chapter on "Myths, Legends, and Symbols," however, Scott discusses animal legends and the Chinese use of animal symbolism. It is a shame that when she notes the nine resemblances of the dragon, she lists only "the horns of a deer, the neck of a snake, the scales of a carp," and leaves the reader with "and so on" for the others. Scott calls fifteenth-century Chinese novels "folk epics," in spite of the fact that Ch'ên Shou-Yi in his Chinese Literature: A Historical Introduction (1961) points out that China "is the only outstanding nation with a literary attainment completely devoid of an epical tradition." Ch'ên Shou-Yi explains this phenomenon by arguing that China's ideal human type has been the sage and not [End Page 184] the hero. Perhaps fifteenth-century novels, in spite of their length, would better be labeled fantasies in the tradition of Hans...

Originating in the mid to late 1980s in China, the "New Realism" novel was influenced by Western postmodernism and became one of the main variants of postmodernism in Chinese literary works, gradually forming a part of Chinese postmodernism literature. These works can analyze both the real-life scenes of Chinese cultural soil and the rebellious spirit influenced by postmodernism. This article takes the New Realism novel as the starting point and analyzes the local acceptance and transformation of postmodernism in Chinese literature, based on the social reality context of the transition period of Chinese literature. This article adopts the methods of parallel research and influence research, taking the characteristics of postmodernism in new realistic novels as the research object, exploring the acceptance of postmodernism in Chinese literature and its transformation in Chinese literature, in order to understand the existence of postmodernism in contemporary Chinese literature. Based on the research of Chinese new realistic novel schools, this article explores the development of Chinese literature in the context of postmodernism.

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works. Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.

It is difficult not to mention language reform when referring to Chinese literature modernization between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Language played a critical role in facilitating the escape of Chinese literature from Chinese medieval literary works in order to integrate into world literature. The language reform not only laid a foundation for modern literature but also contributed considerably to the grand social transformation of China in the early days of the 20th century. Chinese new-born literature was a literature created by spoken language; in Chinese terms, it was considered as a literature focusing on “dialectal speech” instead of “classical Chinese” used in the past. In international terms, it can be named as living language literature which was used to replace classic literary language in ancient books – a kind of dead language. This article will analyze how language reform impacted Chinese modern literature at the beginning of the 20th century.

A Century of Chinese Literature in Translation (1919–2019): English Publication and Reception

In order to improve the digital communication effect of Chinese classic literary works, this paper combines virtual reality technology to carry out the digital system design of Chinese classic literary works, improve the digital design effect of Chinese classic literary works, and develop an augmented reality interaction method based on the HoloLens platform. Moreover, this paper analyzes the lighting model in computer graphics and the rendering process of three-dimensional objects in combination with the digitization requirements of literary works and realizes the rendering of special effects by customizing the lighting model in the shader. The research shows that the digital design system of Chinese classic literary works based on virtual reality technology proposed in this paper has a good effect on the digital protection of Chinese classic literary works.

A growing number of Chinese literary works have been translated and distributed to different nations as China’s relations with other nations deepen. Since translation is important for cross-cultural communication, Chinese literary works have been translated into several languages, including Burmese. In this paper, the author presents the history of the dissemination of Chinese literary works in Myanmar. Furthermore, the author discusses the status of the translated Chinese literary works, the reasons or events behind the challenges encountered in the process of disseminating them in Myanmar, and the nature of the relationship between China and Myanmar based on this literary exchange. In this research the author provides in-depth research of Chinese literary works translated into Burmese spanning over five different periods of time, starting from the early years of formation Sino-Myanmar relationships up until the present time. Each period is characterized by specific publications, for instance; translations during the Early Period include travelogues and medical books; Colonial Period (1885-1948) includes translations of revolutionary and pure literature; the Postcolonial Period (1948-1962) includes translations of political literature; translations during the Military Government Period (1962-2010) mostly include folktales, travelogues, children’s literature and martial arts novels; and translations during the Republic of the Union of Myanmar Period (2010–Present) mostly include Chinese contemporary literature. The aim of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of the history of Chinese literary translation in Myanmar.

China is an ancient country with a long history. It is composed of many ethnic groups and has formed a variety of unique folk cultures. China has many cultures where each region has its own cultural forms. The diversity and complexity of the Chinese folk culture are locality intertwined. The folk culture with Chinese characteristics and local characteristics deserves attention. The full integration of folk culture into Chinese modern and contemporary literary works can effectively enhance the cultural connotation of literary works and play a very important role in promoting the development of our country’s culture, and at the same time, it can also stimulate readers’ interest in reading in the later period. Further understanding of modern Chinese folk culture is of unprecedented help. Therefore, this paper takes “the analysis of the characteristics of folk culture in Chinese modern and contemporary literary works” as a research perspective, hoping to more effectively promote the integration of folk culture and Chinese literary works through this research and then promote the coordinated development and improvement of the two.

Editor's Introduction:Modern Chinese Literature from Local to Global Wang Ning Given the current debate on world literature, more and more scholars realize the limits of old-fashioned views deriving from Eurocentric or Western-centric modes of conceptualizing it and start shifting their attention to the literatures of countries beyond the confines of the West. This new turn follows Goethe's initial conjectures about world literature. In recent years, world literature has been one of the most heatedly debated topics in international academic gatherings, at least since the concept was launched by Franco Moretti (2000) and David Damrosch (2003). However, in spite of a number of excellent analyses, the relations between world literature and modern Chinese literature have not yet been fully discussed. In the past decade, some of the leading journals in literary studies such as Modern Language Quarterly (2008), Neohelicon (2010), Comparative Literature Studies (2012) and Modern Fiction Studies (2016) have published special issues or clusters of articles on related topics; most of these were edited by myself in collaboration with Western colleagues; nevertheless, compared with other monographs and edited volumes on general topics of comparative literature, the results are still far from satisfactory. Here is one of the reasons why my colleague Peng Qinglong and I wanted to edit a special issue on this topic. This time, our perspective is wider and more international, for here we attempt to consider modern Chinese literature in the broad context of world literature, examining how it has changed from its original local context to the current global context and how it has formed a unique tradition, which defines our modern Chinese literary tradition. We also wanted to study how some of the major Chinese writers have been involved in the mainstream of world literature. We will discuss these issues both sychronically and diachronically. In this special issue, contibutions come from different perspectives so as to offer re-readings and interpretations both of influential theoretical trends and of important authors whose works are analyzed in the context of world literature. Indeed, Western literature has been dominant in the field of world literature studies and it hs been enthusiastically received in the Chinese context, which has helped shape a modern Chinese literary tradition. In this respect, translation has [End Page 1] played an important role: without it, modern Chinese literature would not have been able to form a new tradition. Obviously, this modern tradition is different from its precursors in classical Chinese literature. It is also quite different from its Western counterparts, although it has no doubt been inspired by the latter. This is the state in which modern Chinese literature finds itself, both "modern" and "Chinese." This special issue is divided into two parts. In the first part, five essays deal with modern Chinese literary and theoretical trends with regard to their relations with world literature in general, even though some contributors deal more specifically with genres like drama and poetry. Wang Ning analyzes the evolution of humanism that started with the New Culture Movement (1915–1923) and offers his construction of a cosmo-humanism in the age of globalization. Yang Mingming and Yang Xin survey how Russian-Soviet literature was translated and received in a Chinese context, which paved the way to the formation of modern Chinese revolutionary literature. Xiaohong Zhang and Jiazhao Lin focus on new Chinese poetry, which started at the period of the New Culture Movement and developed till the current postmodern era, moving from modernism to the postmodern. He Chengzhou discusses modern Chinese drama taking Cao Yu's plays as the most representative case. Tong-King Lee examines the hybridized elements of Hong Kong literature, made up of factors like colonialism, cosmopolitanism and consumption before offering a critical analysis. Thanks to historical contextualization and descriptive critical analysis, it is hoped that readers who are not familiar with Chinese literature will get a comprehensive picture of its developmen in the context of world literature. In the second part, the essays deal with the most prominent modern Chinese writers. Here are authors whose literary achievements are not only recognized by domestic scholarship but also have gained a wider international reputation. Ming Dong Gu's essay focuses on...

European civic integration programmes claim to provide newcomers with necessary tools for successful participation. Simultaneously, these programmes have been criticised for being restrictive, market-driven and for working towards an implicit goal of limiting migration. Authors have questioned how these programmes discursively construct an offensive image of the Other and how colonial histories are reproduced in the constructions seen today. The Dutch civic integration programme is considered a leading example of a restrictive programme within Europe. Research has critically questioned the discourses within its policies, yet limited research has moved beyond policy to focus on discourse in texts in practice. This study presents a critical discourse analysis of texts used in the civic integration programme and demonstrates that they participate in multiple discursive constructions: the construction of the Dutch nation-state and its citizens as inherently modern, the construction of the Other as Unmodern and thus a threat, and the construction of the hierarchical relationship between the two. The civic integration programme has been left out of discussions on decolonisation to date, contributing to it remaining a core practice of othering. This study applies post-colonial theories to understand the impacts of current discourse, and forwards possibilities for consideration of decolonised alternatives.

An increasing number of workers turn to digital platforms – such as Fiverr, Freelancer, and Upwork – as an alternative to traditional work arrangements. Digital platforms govern how gig workers join, move through, and leave platforms – often with the help of self-learning algorithms. While digital platforms and algorithms take on HRM practices, we know little about how HRM activities unfold on digital work platforms in the gig economy. The study therefore aims to understand how HRM activities apply to and take shape on digital platforms by studying worker perceptions. We combine supervised text analysis with an in-depth qualitative content analysis, relying on 12’924 scraped comments from an online forum of workers on Upwork. We outline five conversations on HRM practices that pertain to access and mobility, training and development, scoring and feedback, appraisal and control and platform literacy and support. Based on these findings, we build five propositions about how digital work platforms employ HRM activities. Our paper contributes to recent work on HRM on digital platforms by (1) developing a new mixed-methods approach that illustrates how the content of HRM practices may differ from traditional organizations, (2) highlighting the changing role of actors in creating HRM practices by introducing the concept of ‘crowd-created’ HRM practices, and (3) conceptualizing how digital platforms employ a ‘hybrid HRM approach’.

The article is focused on the problem of modernism development in Chinese literature of the 1980s.The relevance of the modernism study in Chinese literature of the 1980s is determined by the importance of modern forms of art, which enabled a fundamental change the situation in contemporary Chinese literature, not only through the frst decade after the “cultural revolution” but also in subsequent periods. Particular attention is paid to the study of the “search for roots” literature — one of the most signifcant results of searching for modernism in the 1980 in China. The direction of the “search for roots” literature took politics out of literature and separated it. This is one of the most signifcant results of searching for the modernism of the 1980s, which aimed at forming a new subjectivity in Chinese literature in the context of awareness and overcoming the identity crisis, caused by the catastrophe of the adamant ideological discourse. In this sense, the value of modernism in contemporary Chinese literature goes far beyond the literary process itself.Key words: modernism, “searching for roots” literature, Chinese literature, cultural revolution, China.

The article is devoted to the problem of interaction between the genres of Eastern and Western literature, which is an important part of modern literary criticism. In this paper, the interaction of genres is considered on the basis of Mo Yan’s novel “The Republic of Wine” (1992), translated into Russian in 2012 by I. Egorov. The work of the modern Chinese writer is studied in the aspect of “hallucinatory realism”, for its development the author was awarded the Nobel Prize (2012). The article studies the influence of classical Chinese literature genres and philosophy and Western literature on modern Chinese literature, based on the novel “The Republic of Wine” by Mo Yan. The novel of the Chinese writer is analyzed in the context of the world literary process. The article discusses the transformation of motifs and characters of Chinese classical literature in the novel by a modern Chinese author. The main characters of the novel are studied in relation to the plot-forming function they perform, the main of them is the detective one. The plot of the detective story is considered in relation to the satirical tradition. The article presents Mo Yan’s view of the traditions, mentality and lifestyle of the Chinese people. The purpose of the work is to determine the main aspects of the influence of Chinese and Western literature on the work of Mo Yan “The Republic of Wine”. As a result of the study, we describe the plot motifs and images of classical Chinese and Western novels, the ideological principles of Chinese philosophy, which are embodied in Mo Yan’s novel “The Republic of Wine”.

The interpretation of ”The Mencius” by Chu Hsi is to make a comprehensive survey to the deduction of Chinese Classics. It base on quotation of sage and expanding from great virtue Confucian scholar interaction, to be a traditional classics, and to be a source of authority values. It edifies a moral conduct and forbearing pattern. On the other side, it adore classical comment of sages and the virtuous. To disturb the divine region, Chu Hsi devote himself encouragement also disclose his life experience and ideal. Thus, he interpreted a explanatory notes of classics, become to practice self-learning with body and mind, and also to implant the classics with nonstop inner abundant meanings. Interpreting the developing history of Chinese Classics carefully, the Chinese Classics in Song dynasty was an important key point of Mencius study extension. The interpretations started from Chinese Literature-Masters and philosophers (zibu), educed to Chinese Literature-Classics category (jingbu) continued the ancient ”Sinology”, and opened the new ”Song Learning”. It not only explained the elevation of classical position in ”The Mencius”, and also pointed out the importance of the literature in the history. Chu Hsi ( a literary author in the South Song dynasty) was in this environment and climate, therefore determined to collect the great undertaking of interpretations of the ”Four Chinese Confucianism Literature” which is including Classics category (jingbu), Historio-graphical category (shibu), Masters and philosophers (zibu), Anthologies category or ”Belles-lettres” (jibu).The paper is to seek the interpretation of ”The Mencius” which was interpreted by Chu Hsi, also deduce the reason of changes in Confucianism explanatory note by comparing the developing history of ”The Mencius” with the Chinese literature in Song dynasty. Let us not only know that why the Confucianism in Song dynasty is respect to Confucian orthodoxy, and aspire to continue the tradition, but also reply the challenge of Buddhism and Taoism. In this paper intend to analyze the subject by two sections here. First, bring up the origin of Confucianism, and analyze why that Chu Hsi constructed the ”Four Chinese Confucianism Literature” system to replace ”The Five Confucian Classics”. Second, analyze the interpreted method used by Chu Hsi, and tell how he reversed the interpretations from Sui and Tang Dynasty, and how he integrated the Sinology and Song Confucianism to open up a new ”Mencius Learning” history. Chu Hsi respected to ”The Great Learning”, ”The Doctrine of the Mean”, and esteemed ”The Mencius”, ”The Confucius Analects”. The man opened up hundred years of Mencius learning climate, and established an indestructible orthodox position of ”The Mencius” in Confucianism. Thus, the paper restores the interpreted standpoint and methods of Chu Hsi, and compare with the west interpreted theory, also try to advance the explanation in the above-mentioned subject.

Classic works of literature have created many unique figures of female leaders. These works provide excellent material to support this research on the perception of female leadership in their time period. In order to investigate the performance of female leadership in Chinese literature, this paper designs a model for assessing the strength of female leadership in literary figures based on a corpus and Nvivo qualitative research method and integrates it with the analysis of the literary context to form a paradigm for assessing the strength of female leadership in literary figures. At the same time, this research applies and validates this assessment paradigm by selecting female leaders from three different Chinese literary works of different periods. The significance of this research lies in the design of an interdisciplinary model for assessing the strength of female leadership based on leadership theory and realizes qualitative analysis of the strength of female leadership in literary figures. This research also gives three prospects, hoping that future research will be based on a social gender perspective, that more attention will be paid to the role of literature in historical leadership studies, and that a method for assessing the strength of female leadership in literary figures in an international context will be devised.